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Chollas Creek Will Stay Full of Metals — But Now It's OK With Regulators

On Wednesday, the San Diego Regional Water Quality Board decided that its limits on metals dumped into the creek were too strict. Now, thousands of pounds of copper and zinc will continue to flow into the creek, but it’ll be considered fine.

Chollas Creek where it meets Auburn Creek in San Diego. / Photo by Jamie Scott Lytle

The San Diego Regional Water Quality Board eased cleanup requirements for Chollas Creek on Wednesday — a move that will save local cities over $1 billion.

A decade ago, researchers found that tiny but toxic amounts of dissolved metal hurt marine life in the creek.

So the board imposed strict limits on the amount of copper and zinc allowed in the creek and ordered cities to start cleaning it up. Those metals came from roads, industrial businesses and parking lots. They were mostly carried into the creek by rain. So the cleanup was going to be long, complicated and expensive.

But the rules were based on what’s now considered old and inadequate science.

On Wednesday, the board simply decided that its old limits were too strict. Now, thousands of pounds of copper and zinc will continue to flow into the creek, but it’ll be considered fine.

Environmentalists said the decision was a defeat for low-income people and minorities who live along Chollas Creek, which starts in La Mesa and Lemon Grove then runs through the heart of San Diego and out into the bay.

That’s expensive work, but it would have helped with other problems in the creek and could have brought Chollas close to the ideals of the federal Clean Water Act: to make every waterway in America fishable and swimmable. Instead, the creek remains ugly and undesirable.

The city spent much of the past decade trying to change the rules. It funded more studies of the creek. Those studies concluded that tiny bits of metal – which add up to thousands of pounds a year – are not toxic to marine life. Even the water board’s chairman, Henry Abarbanel, has called the old limits “unscientific and random.”

But environmentalists said that the board was essentially giving up on the creek by easing the rule.

“This is the mechanism to ensure that progress will happen in Chollas Creek,” said Matt O’Malley, the executive director for San Diego Coastkeeper, referring to the rule that just got scrapped.

David Gibson, the executive director of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Board, said the rule change “does not mean that we’re turning our back on the South Bay, it just means we’re adjusting our focus to the issues that are of greatest concern.”

While their lawsuits focus on water pollution, Beaudin and her law partner, Marco Gonzalez, use water laws to counter what they consider to be bad land use planning that hurts low-income San Diegans: The polluters they identify are also doing industrial activity, right in the middle of residential areas like Barrio Logan and City Heights.

Laurie Walsh, the head of the board’s stormwater program, said 35 industrial facilities in Chollas Creek have permits that indicate they are likely to be discharging metals into the water.

The board regulates about 800 businesses in the entire region, though it’s likely that hundreds if not thousands more companies may be evading the law. Of those that do have a permit in the region, over 200 have discharged more pollution into the water than is allowed by state rules, according to state data. Those rules remain in place and were unaffected by Wednesday’s board vote.